Home
by Bohemian Storm
Summary: A regular night for Lilah Morgan is never really that regular. WesleyLilah.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own the characters.  They belong to Joss Whedon and co.

**Home**

_By Bohemian Storm_

She unlocks the door, making sure to close it behind her and engage the deadbolt. Angel can kick her door open, she's learned, when the deadbolt isn't it place. Something in the back of her head says he'd probably still be able to do it, but Billy is dead, so unless Angel is suddenly worried about Wesley's whereabouts, she doubts he'll be by. She smiles.  
  
She drops her keys in the bowl by the door. It looks like home. It doesn't feel that way. They keys clink against the glass bowl and she sees reruns of an old television show playing in her head. Black and white, just like she remembers. _Honey, I'm home._ There's no one else in her apartment. Just ghosts of her past and she tends to ignore even those.   
  
She doesn't bother turning on the lights. She doesn't need to see. It's lavish, it's rich, and it's big. She knows the apartment from top to bottom. She can tell you what each item cost. She's rich, after all. It's all money. All of it. The hardwood floors clacking under her high heels; six thousand dollars to have it put in, just in the hallway and bedroom. The shoes themselves cost a fortune. At least eight hundred.  
  
She enters the bedroom. Drops her purse, then her briefcase. It hits the floor with a thud. She winces. She probably just chipped the six thousand dollar flooring. She thinks about picking it up for a moment, then decides to leave it where it is. She's not going to do any work tonight. She has no reason to work. She just beheaded the boss and took his place. She can afford to spend one evening getting drunk alone in the dark. She's going to use the crystal flutes, she decides and not for champagne. She wonders if there's any scotch or vodka left in the cabinet. She'd used the regular glasses, but she has reason to celebrate.  
  
She kicks off her shoes, leaving them where they fall. She should pick them up, but she won't. Abandoned footwear is part of a home. She remembers this from the girls she went to school with. Her parents would have never allowed it. Not her stiff, rigid mother with her clean white floors and her cigar smoking father with his library and vocabulary to rival a thesaurus. She went to a sleepover once - her only party in middle school - when she was twelve. She remembers the smell of it. It didn't smell like her house.  
  
And they left their shoes all over the floor.  
  
She steps over them and goes toward the closet, unbuttoning her blouse as she walks. She slips out of her jacket and hangs it next to all the others. The blues, reds, grays and blacks, side by side, all her jackets. All her costumes. The blouse she tosses into the laundry hamper. She unzips the back of her skirt and it follows the blouse, hanging haphazardly on the lip of the hamper. Her fingers graze it as she passed and it slips inside, dropping on top of all the other clothing with a soft swish.   
  
In the dark she steps out of her pantyhose and leaves them lying on the floor beside her high heels. She's not expecting any unwelcome visitors, but she's learned not to take the chance. She opens the dresser drawer and flicks through her clothing. She doesn't want to dress again. She wants to sit on her couch in her underwear and a robe, but there's always the chance that someone will want to see her. Gavin. Angel. Wesley.  
  
She figures Gavin will show up within the next few days either way. He wants her dead. She doubts the fact that he had to carry Linwood's head out of the board room changed his feelings for her very much. Angel always wants her dead for one reason or another and Wesley wants her for altogether different reasons. She thinks that it's mostly because Angel wants him dead too.  
  
The thought shouldn't make her smile, but it does.  
  
She was taught never to dress down, even when she's alone in her home. It's ingrained in her. She can practically hear her mother's voice snapping at her to find a nice skirt. _One can still look proper and feel casual._ That's her mother, alright. Rigid and cruel. Exactly what she grew up into.  
  
She slides into a skirt and a loose shirt. It's instinct to pick these clothes, to only feel at home with rich fabrics and luxurious carpets and all the material things other people think they don't need. It's not because she's shallower. She's better than they are. Better. Different. She's important. That's why she's paid as well as she is. And maybe she does think too highly of herself, but she doesn't know when such a thing became a crime.  
  
_"Because_ you _are a vicious bitch."  
"__So you know me."_  
  
They don't know her. They think they know her. Vicious bitch. It's a mask, like all her suits and skirts. She remembers that when she first started working for Wolfram and Hart, the expensive clothing made her feel like a princess. Pretty, naïve thoughts flickering through her mind, drowning the great depths of intelligence there. Sometimes she's surprised that she went anywhere within the company. She felt so awestruck in the beginning. She knows that she didn't project that image because Lindsey once asked her, only two weeks after they had both been recruited, how she kept so still and professional when the other lawyers spoke to her.  
  
She remembers smiling prettily at him. She remembers the look he got when she did it. That look she learned to use as she got older. She smiled so sweetly, then said, 'Well excuse me if I don't wet my fucking pants like a pathetic little lap dog every time someone important enters the room.' A blatant glance at his groin was all that was needed. He hated her from that moment.  
  
She leaves the bedroom, fingers trailing on the wall as she walks down the hall and enters the living room. Light from the street lamps outside filters through her blinds and although she doesn't need the light, she opens them. Her living room is cast into an orange glow and she turns toward the liquor cabinet before her eyes have the chance to take in everything on the street below her.  
  
It's easier to avoid the things that make you uncomfortable.  
  
She tells herself than any normal human would feel guilty, seeing the people living in filth on the streets below while she lives in a gorgeous apartment. Normal people would feel guilty. She doesn't. They annoy her, the homeless who beg for change when she takes the short walk between her apartment building and her car. She worked for her money; every cent of it. She's not going to give it away to someone who couldn't even be bothered to finish high school.  
  
She pours herself a drink with a steady, calculated hand. She's been pouring herself drinks for many years. She does it perfectly. It never spills.  
  
She's so glad he's dead.  
  
_"He doesn't know anything. There's nothing to take advantage of."  
"Except you._  
  
She wishes she could have arranged for Gavin to join Linwood, but she supposes her current position will have to be good enough. Vice President. She likes the sound of that. It's power; it's everything she's been working toward since joining the company six years ago.   
  
She takes a sip of the drink and sits down on her sofa, wondering what her parents would say. Her father is dead. Her mother is lost. He died of a heart attack when she was eighteen. She can't say she ever really _missed_ him. Her mother, on the other hand, is just gone. Lost inside that tangled mess the doctor still insist is a brain.   
  
She sighs, downing the drink and pouring another. Her throat is burning, but she ignores it. The flashing lightly on her answering machine catches her eye and her finger hovers over the play button for a long moment. It could be Linwood. His final testament on her answering machine. It could be Gavin, ranting, filled with death threats.  
  
Or, it could be ...  
  
She presses the button and his voice fills the room.  
  
"I have that volume you've been looking for. Most of it is still in the original Romanian text, so it's not exactly easy to read." He pauses. "I'll bring it over for you tonight."  
  
And right on time, there is a knock at her door. She smirks, puts down the drink and walks down the hall. He has impeccable timing, always showing up just as she's thinking about him.  
  
She unlocks the door and leans against the frame, studying him. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe it's best that she's always ready for a visitor.   
  
"Did you get my message?" he asks.  
  
She nods. "Just now."  
  
He holds up the book. "Here it is."  
  
She takes it from him. "Is that all?"  
  
"No."  
  
And he kisses her and the door slams shut behind them both. She knows her half finished drink will be forgotten; poured down the drain the next morning. She can't find it in herself to care. Nor can she find the energy to be worried about the unlocked front door. Let Angel kick it down if he wants. Let Gavin walk on in. It's easier to not care.  
  
They both stumble over her discarded shoes as they make their way into the bedroom.  
  
"You should learn to pick up after yourself, Lilah," he tells her, as his mouth presses to her throat. "It's not like you to leave things lying around. It's not neat."  
  
She agrees with him, but the words are lost against his mouth and her shoes are forgotten. She'll think about them the next morning, however, and be reminded that they make her bedroom look like a home.  
  
End   
  



End file.
